[Army Life in a Black Regiment by Thomas Wentworth Higginson]@TWC D-Link book
Army Life in a Black Regiment

CHAPTER 4
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Squad.
To the Senior Officer at the different Blockading Stations on the Coast of Georgia and Florida.
We waited twenty-four hours for her, at the sultry mouth of that glassy river, watching the great pelicans which floated lazily on its tide, or sometimes shooting one, to admire the great pouch, into which one of the soldiers could insert his foot, as into a boot.

"He hold one quart," said the admiring experimentalist.

"Hi! boy," retorted another quickly, "neber you bring dat quart measure in _my_ peck o' corn." The protest came very promptly, and was certainly fair; for the strange receptacle would have held nearly a gallon.
We went on shore, too, and were shown a rather pathetic little garden, which the naval officers had laid out, indulging a dream of vegetables.
They lingered over the little microscopic sprouts, pointing them out tenderly, as if they were cradled babies.

I have often noticed this touching weakness, in gentlemen of that profession, on lonely stations.
We wandered among the bluffs, too, in the little deserted hamlet called "Pilot Town." The ever-shifting sand had in some cases almost buried the small houses, and had swept around others a circular drift, at a few yards' distance, overtopping then: eaves, and leaving each the untouched citadel of this natural redoubt.

There was also a dismantled lighthouse, an object which always seems the most dreary symbol of the barbarism of war, when one considers the national beneficence which reared and kindled it.


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